Crazy Question? Is Google Actually Ranking New Websites?

[RedBar]

Four months ago I launched a new widget site and within days it was indexed by Google however only one of the pages has received any ranking whatsoever plus 90+% of the traffic it seems to get is to the home page only, it's nearly a 1:1 site, one visitor : one page.

Has anyone had any success in the past 6 months with a brand new site without resorting to ads?

[tangor]

Haven't launched anything new in years, so this is an interesting question.

Have you checked your access logs to see if the homepage visit leads to an internal page (2 fer 1, so to speak)?

[dolcevita]

@RedBar

I launched a new website in the spring of 2020 and ranking positions only started to appear a year and a half later. And as usually happens with Google, suddenly there were many positions for different keywords.

I was unpleasantly surprised at the length of time Google kept the new website on the sidelines.

Back in 2012, the difference was drastic, when I launched a then new website, which within 3 months gained ranking positions.

[RedBar]

@tangor

Have you checked your access logs to see if the homepage visit leads to an internal page

This is what puzzles me 90+% hit the index page only and then disappear. When I see bots they usually track across my main top navigation, sometimes across the footer but very rarely go any deeper and especially not into the product pages. It's been this way for years with many of those type of bots unlike G / B/ Y / DDG / etc that delve deeper.

@dolcevita
I've seen these long ranking waits too for brand new pages in the past couple of years or so even on 25+ year old sites.

However, this seems to be affecting only my global sites, my 15+ year old local UK sites do not appear to have had any delays BUT those sites have always had their new pages linked directly from the home page, they're not two or three levels down product pages plus do they get preference being localised content whereas does G perceive my global sites as "generic" regardless of how much unique valuable content is there?

[rustybrick]

I launched a new website in March 2022 and it did incredibly well after a few months.

[Pjman]

@Red Bar - I launched a site in April 2023, it is doing amazing. The big push was getting high quality back links from authorities in the space as well as having some of the best Time on Page metrics I have seen to date in that space. Good content and good links still works well.

[tangor]

@Pjman ... let us know how these stats hold up after the rippers and scrapers get done!

[Bloggerist]

Yes, new sites are being ranked. Launched a few sites in September/October 2023 and they are beginning to appear on the serps.

[RedBar]

Launched a few sites in September/October 2023 and they are beginning to appear on the serps.

So, after 3-4 months you are just starting to see rankings?

Interestingly the site I launched 4 months ago, one page today has suddenly appeared at the #1 position, must check some other pages to see if they've been ranked.

[Bloggerist]

Yes, with a few long tail keywords ranking earlier.

[javelin]

Long time no see guys
@RedBar

If you remember a good while back I had a fairly new educational related site I was discussing on here. It was new, still is by comparison to many out there. Short story is this... yes Google is ranking new sites and rather quickly but... the long story is mixed...

Long tails will give better results initially. Those who say they are doing great and ranking well comes with a grain of salt. Define doing well and ranking well. Each person may have a different answer.

If someone has a large number of links, high traffic on competitive keywords in under a year I immediately get skeptical that they are doing something that can get them delisted, banned, or otherwise. It is possible to hit a niche that just does well but less and less likely when new. So... what does one do?

If you are commerce focused its going to be lower volume less competitive keywords with longtails and some old school marketing to get it off the launchpad. I discovered for me "to do well" required a lot more natural writing, material, less focus on keyword hunting and more focus on theme and topic related material.

In other words the broader view of where the site was going seems to impact the later outcome significantly. The faster Google figures out what that new site is about by theme and overall topic the faster it moves. If the site is too broad, being new, it may take a while.